


j'eu les poids

by carrieevew



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Reunions, Season/Series 05, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-28 17:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13908918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrieevew/pseuds/carrieevew
Summary: Bellamy’s grip on the gun tightened and he put his left foot forward, wanting to get closer but he froze, as somewhere from behind him, someone called his name.At first he thought that maybe one of his space-travelling companions caught up to him but no, the voice didn’t belong to any of them and anyway, it sounded too young. It did occur to him that it was quite strange that this person knew him name but if they were from the bunker, they probably heard of him at some point during those six year and recognised him, even despite the scruff on his face that he hadn’t shaved off in way too long.„Bellamy!” the voice hissed again, the person sounded inpatient and almost irritated, so he turned around, ready to snap at whoever that was, only to freeze once again and the sight.There was a girl, peeking from behind a tree several feet behind him.or: my idea of the season 5 reunion





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when inspirations runs away from you for months only to come back with a vengeance. i literally came back from work and didn't stop writing until i was done. this is so utterly un-betaed and unedited. i was too keyed up to read it through before publishing so feel free to point out all the mistakes, there must be so many!
> 
> named after a [a song by Luxtorpeda](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVzSDL2q7AI). i was actually trying for the longest time to write something fitting this title and i finally found it, quite by accident.
> 
> enjoy!

The thing that got to him the most after they landed was the silence.

It wasn’t even about the lack of the machine hum, which he definitely noticed, just like the last time. 

But now, there was just—nothing. 

There was no wind and even if, the trees were still too small and too far form each other to make much noise even if they were being blown about. And as far as he could tell, there were no animals around, not even birds. 

It was eerily quiet and the farther away from their landing spot he got, the more frequent were the chills running down his back.

They decided to split up and search the grounds around them individually to cover as much as possible, as quickly as possible. They needed to find water and some place to set up camp, even a temporary one because the land around their ramshackle rocket wasn’t an option and they needed to find some cover before the night fell.

And so, Bellamy grabbed one of the handguns they’d brought back with them from the Ark and walked straight ahead, with no idea where he was going.

He was walking for about half an hour—he assumed, and the further he went, the thicker the trees were and he started to remember how Raven tried to explain to them the aftermath of Praimfaya; how not all of the Earth would be effected the same way, what those four survivable percent actually meant - and after about an hour of walking, he realised he probably reached one of those areas that survived best. 

He was about to thank the universe for this tiny piece of luck but right then, he noticed that it wasn’t so quiet any longer. He stopped dead in the middle of the forest and listened for the longest time before he believed that yes, he was hearing  _voices_. People were shouting incomprehensibly and there was no way for Bellamy to decipher what that was all about without getting any closer but they were undeniably people. 

He felt a fleeting notion to just run towards them because it just had to be the people from the bunker, right? His people. His  _sister_.

But he didn’t. He heard Clarke's voice in his head, telling him to be smart about it. The same voice he heard in his dreams nearly every night for the last six years, so instead, he grabbed his gun from the holster and taken the safety off. He turned slightly towards the sounds and soon, he reached the tree line and saw the clearing, filled with people. All of whom were complete strangers to him.

Now, that wasn’t exactly surprising, six years was a long time and besides, he wouldn’t recognise most of the grounders who ultimately made it inside anyway. But there was something about the way those people behaved, how they carried themselves, that was uncomfortably unfamiliar to him. 

And then, he noticed something metal on the other side of the clearing, hidden behind the trees growing there. It looked so much like the pieces of the Ark they used to find scattered all over the area and he tried to remember if maybe there was one that they hadn’t found before, if maybe something else survived Praimfaya but he couldn’t tell. It was too far away.

Bellamy’s grip on the gun tightened and he put his left foot forward, wanting to get closer but he froze, as somewhere from behind him, someone called his name.

At first, he thought that maybe one of his space-travelling companions caught up to him but no, the voice didn’t belong to any of them and anyway, it sounded too young. It did occur to him that it was quite strange that this person knew him name but if they were from the bunker, they probably heard of him at some point during those six year and recognised him, even despite the scruff on his face that he hadn’t shaved off in way too long. 

„Bellamy!” the voice hissed again, the person sounded inpatient and almost irritated, so he turned around, ready to snap at whoever that was, only to freeze once again and the sight.

There was a girl, peeking from behind a tree several feet behind him. She was maybe 13, 14 years old, was wearing a beanie over her long dark her and she looked... well, that was the part that made him suspect that maybe the air wasn’t as safe as they initially thought, that maybe the radiation or the dust, or whatever he’d been breathing for the last few hours had already taken effect and he’d been hallucinating because the girl look so, so much like his sister did when she was that age. 

As he stood there, staring at her, the girl grew even more impatient and, with a huff and an eye roll that only reminded him more about Octavia, she came closer, stopping barely a couple of feet in front of him. 

“You may wanna stop waving that thing around,” she said, pointing her chin towards his gun, “cause if they see you with it, they’re not gonna ask questions first.”

She brushed against Bellamy's arm when she looked beyond him, checking if someone from the clearing had noticed them but then stepped away from him, clearly satisfied that they remained undiscovered. Bellamy nodded, strangely okay with following the girl’s instructions. There was something so familiar about her, so different from the people he’d just observed, that even if he knew by now she really was there, he still felt comfortable around her.

And clearly, so did she, a fact that baffled him still. Even though he must’ve looked awful, covered in sweat and dirt, his clothes rumpled from the space suit he’d only taken a short while ago, she didn’t seem scared of him at all, not even slightly unsure.

Instead, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looking like she was moments away from yanking him to follow her wherever she wanted them to go.

“Bellamy!” she huffed, shaking him out of his thoughts. “Will you just come with me?” the girl demanded, confirming his suspicions, “the guards are gonna be here any minute and I don’t want them to know we’ve been spying on them.”

Bellamy cleared his throat, which earned him an annoyed glare from the girl, who was already moving away from him and further into the forest, and he just—followed. His guide was moving quickly throughout the woods, clearly familiar with the terrain and sure of the destination that they were walking towards.

He had about a million questions that he wanted to ask the girl but given how fast she was trying to get away from the clearing, he decided it wasn’t the time to ask them. 

At some point, the girl slowed down and turned to look at him, as if it only occurred to her to check if he was keeping up.

“What is your name?” he finally asked when she slowed enough to walk side by side with him. It wasn’t the most important thing he wanted to find out but he figured, if she knew his name, it would only be fair for him to know hers.

“I’m Madi,” she answered, not looking at him.

“Who were people out there? They’re not ours, are they?”

“No, they came on a space ship couple of weeks ago,” she explained and that sure made sense – the piece of metal he saw did come from space, just not from the Ark.

“They’re from a mining colony,  _in space_ ,” Madi continued, some excitement bleeding through in her voice and that, more than anything else, confirmed to him that she, unlike him, was born on Earth.

Bellamy felt hope growing inside him, that Madi was probably leading him towards the survivors from the bunker, that very soon now, he might see his sister again. He wanted to ask her about that but before he could, Madi spoke again.

“We checked the archives and if they are who we think they are, they’re prisoners. Just like you right? Well, not  _you_ exactly, but the rest that first came down here. Only they have guns. And some heavy equipment that looks dangerous, so we haven’t talked with them yet. It’s not like we have a chance against them.” She was chatting now, clearly more comfortable now, that they’ve put some distance between them and the supposed prisoners. 

Her words surprised him a little. Not that Madi knew his story, if anything, that explained how she knew who he was. But there was maybe a couple of hundred people around the ship and there was supposed to be much, much more inside the bunker. Did that mean only a small number of them lived? Or maybe she was a part of a scouting group and the rest was still somewhere back in Polis?

“How many of you survived in the bunker?” he asked and Madi looked at him with regret.

“I don’t know, we were never able to find it, not really,” she answered and looked away from him, looking around them instead.

It was a moment before her words sunk. What did she mean, they never found it? Who the hell was she, if she didn’t come out of the bunker? Bellamy opened his mouth, ready to ask her all about it but suddenly, she sped up again and skipped between the trees to another clearing, this one much smaller and wilder.

He was so focused on trying to figure out what was going on that he didn’t even notice that she walked toward a hide and started to remove that branches camouflaging the entrance, not until he heard the hum of a motor. A sound he used to know so well and hadn’t heard in over six years. He whipped his head towards her and saw her throw her fist in the air, triumph all over her face.

“Yes!” Madi exclaimed. “The Donkey lives!”

She turned the rover off and jumped out of it, going around it to open the back door. Bellamy just stood there, watching her in stunned silence because this was just about too much for him. 

Madi pulled out a burlap sack and rummaged through it, coming up with a can of something. Bellamy didn’t even realise she was still talking until he heard her say: “the battery isn’t what it used to be, you know? So, it’s a good thing you guys finally came back, maybe Raven will be able to do something about it. I mean, I was trying to learn more about that motor but it’s not like I could’ve put it apart and study it, right? What if I wasn’t able to fix it.”

She came back to stand in front of him and offered him the can. 

“Want some of the berries?” she asked casually, shaking the can slightly. “They’re safe, just still a little sour.”

Bellamy pressed his hands to his face, rubbing at his eyes, hoping to clear the cloud of absolute confusion from his head. 

There was one other option, one other reason why this girl would know about him or Raven, or the bunker. Except that wasn’t actually possible.

It couldn’t have been because he’d just spent all those years learning how to live with what had happened. There must’ve been some other explanation because that would mean that Clarke—

“There you are, Fearless Leader!” Murphy called from behind him and Bellamy’s head snapped up. He whirled around, to see the rest of his group filing in from between the trees, Murphy and Emori first, then Harper, Monty, Echo and Raven at the back. And right next to her...

***

She looked different. Her blond her was much shorter, her face was sharper and tanned, her clothes sturdier and darker, and she had a rifle hanging from her shoulder.

But in a way... nothing changed. As she walked towards him, he saw that her eyes were still impossibly blue and bright. Her smile still made him melt.

“Have you any idea how loud he was being? And careless? I was following him half the way to the Eligius and he never noticed! I had to call out to him  _twice_!” he heard Madi complain. “The animals must’ve been so stupid back then if he managed to catch any of them, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” She laughed gently, glancing around him at Madi, only to look back at him, a hesitant smile on her face. “Hi, Bellamy,” she said and that voice—

That voice was the thing that finally broke him out of the haze. 

The same voice that used to scream at him in his nightmares and then tell him to wake up and go on living in his dreams. The voice he wished he could've heard one more time, but instead knowing that it would never happen.

"Clarke," he croaked, his eyes roving all over her face, until finally, he moved and caught her around her middle, pulling him closer to him. Clarke, raised on her tiptoes, put her arms around him, enveloping him in a hug so incredibly tight, just as they did the first time they thought they'd lost each other.

"You're late," she whispered into his neck, her breath and tears tickling at his skin. Bellamy breathed deeply, inhaling her scent—some of it the forest, some of it the leather she was wearing, all of it Clarke, and tightened his grip on her even further.

"Yeah, so were you," he shot back. He rested his forehead on her shoulder, never letting her go. "I'm sorry we didn't wait."

"It's okay," Clarke assured him, pulling slightly away, just enough to look him in the eye. "You're here now." 

***

The tale of her survival saw a harrowing one. And not complete.

Bellamy could tell from the look on Clarke's face, that whatever she'd told them, wasn't the whole story. He wanted to push, the self-flagellating part of him demanding to know every horrible detail so that he would know exactly what to blame himself for but in the end, he didn't ask.

Madi came to Clarke's side while she had been telling them about their nightblood and how long they stayed in Becca's lab. When the girl grabbed Clarke's hand halfway through the story, he realised that no matter how bad it would've been for him to listen to it, it would've been so much worse for Clarke to go through telling it.

He was hoping that one day it wouldn't be so difficult for her to talk about it and if time was what she needed, he'd give her as much of it as she wanted.

***

The first taste of meat after six years of algae goo was nearly enough to make them all tear up a little, what was left of Monty's moonshine did the rest and before he knew it, their dinner by the fire turned into a walk down memory lane. They were exchanging stories and laughing so much, it almost made him feel like no time had passed. 

Clarke was sitting on a log to his left, always within arm's reach, with Madi close to her side. Bellamy couldn't help but smile as the girl demanded their confirmation that all the stories Clarke had told her about them were true. It felt so strange, to hear about their "adventures" from the mouth of a girl he'd only met a few hours before, who seemed to have known all about them already. Even more so that when she looked at them, talked to them, her cheeks red with excitement, they all sounded like heroes. 

After a few hours, when the fire started to die down and their heads started to loll from side to side, Bellamy noticed Clarke saying something quietly to Madi, before getting up from her seat and walking toward the rover. 

He hesitated for a fraction of a second before following her. He wasn't ready yet to let her out of his sight again. He stood up and staggered slightly, his head heavy from the moonshine, which earned him a slew of jeers and cackling from his companions. Bellamy flipped Murphy, who as always, laughed the loudest and walked away from the group, towards Clarke who'd already reached the rover and disappeared at the back of it.

"Hi," he said, hoping not to startle her. Clarke peeked from behind some dried herbs hanging from the roof, with a smirk on her face.

"Madi was right, you know," she said handing him a bundle. "You really are terribly loud."

"Well, I'm drunk," he countered and Clarke snorted.

"Yeah? What's you're excuse for earlier, huh?" She teased, pulling out another bundle from the rover. "That's all the extra blankets I can give you right now," she explained as she unwrapped the one she was holding, "but it's already warm enough in the night that you should be alright around the fire, if you all sleep close to each other. 

Bellamy nodded and unwrapped the one he was holding. It was old and thin but definitely enough for two, if they huddled close enough. He thanked Clarke quietly and she smiled softly at him before coming to his side. She looked at the rest of the group, still sitting around the fire, fondness all over her face.

"How old is she?" Bellamy asked, turning around and looking at Madi.

"Thirteen," Clarke answered, a hint of incredulity in her voice and Bellamy understood. He remembered when he first saw Octavia in the dropship, after the whole year apart, and realised how much time had passed and how grown she'd been. It was quite a shock.

"She's so—She's amazing," Clarke continued, softly. "So smart, and curious, and brilliant. Do you know that she actually understands mechanics? She took apart every single thing she could find in Becca's lab and she managed to put them back together. Well, most of them." Clarke laughed and Bellamy felt a smile stretching his face in a way that hadn't happen for the longest time. 

They saw Madi move a little closer to Raven and put her head on the mechanic's shoulder. Clarke let out a huff full of fond exasperation.

"Yeah, time for bed," she announced and walked back toward the fire.

Bellamy stayed behind for a moment, looking at her back, with a thousand thoughts going through his hear at the same time.

A part of him still couldn't believe this was happening. He would wake up in a moment and he'd still be on the Ark. Or the bump on his head from when he'd hit it on the side of the rocket during their landing was much more serious that he'd thought and he really did hallucinate this whole thing.

Or maybe, just maybe, after all those years and all the horrible shit that they'd gone through, this was finally the time when something good was happening to them.

 _Yes_ , he thought to himself as he watched Clarke talking to Raven and Madi saying goodnight to the group, hugging Harper.

Maybe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we have the second chapter. the previous one had since been edited.
> 
> thank you so much for your feedback, i'm glad you enjoyed it and i hope you like this one as well.

For all that this was undeniably a good thing, it wasn’t by any means an easy one.

Especially considering that the first thing they did the next day, was argue.

After they had breakfast—small, but still unspeakably better than the algae, Clarke sent Madi in Echo’s company to check the traps around their camp and then explained to the rest the situation with the bunker. And the situations was desperate.

Even finding Polis in the first place was a nightmare. The GPS device Clarke found at the lab couldn’t pick up the satellite signal because of all the dust, so they were wandering about for weeks, unable to find any recognisable landmarks anymore.

And then, once they finally reached the ruins of what once used to be a metropolis, they were welcomed by a picture of misery and despair. They waded through the debris as far as they could but without a signal from the bunker, it was an impossible task for them to even find the hatch, not to mention trying to uncover it.

There was a deafening silence once Clarke finished off the story with a resignation in her voice, saying that they had no choice but to come back home and leave Polis behind.

Bellamy could feel all that hope from last night draining out of him. If Clarke had years to come up with a solution and couldn’t, he was beginning to doubt that they would have much more luck in doing so. But then Raven rose up from her seat and started to toddle around, her gait still readjusting to Earth’s gravity.

“What if we asked Eligius for help?” she proposed, looking at Clarke with her eyes open wide, the gears in her head turning wildly.

“What?” Clarke snapped her response. “No.”

“Clarke—”

“ _No_ , Raven. We are not going anywhere near those people,” she denied with finality but Raven wasn’t about to give up, Bellamy could see it in the set of her jaw, the way she always looked when she was tackling a problem to solve.

“You said it yourself, there’s no way do to it by hand and besides, none of us ever dug anything deeper than a latrine pool, we wouldn’t even know where to begin. Or how,” Raven ploughed on. “But they would—they’re miners for fuck’s sake! And they have equipment.”

“I also said that they were prisoners!” Clarke exclaimed, raising from her seat and coming up toe to toe with Raven, who huffed but didn’t back off.

“So were all of the delinquents. So were you!”

“Sure,” Clarke mocked, “but we’re not talking about a bunch of children locked up for breaking curfew and smoking pot! Those are indentured convicts, sent off-world for hard labour.”

“Exactly, means that they’ll actually know what they’re doing,” Raven shot back, putting her hands on her hips, placing herself in an offensive position.

Bellamy took a few steps closer to them, hoping to defuse the situation, as Clarke and Raven were currently staring daggers at each other.

“Clarke,” he started, and her head whipped towards him so quickly, she could’ve gotten whiplash. “Raven does have a point,” he said, trying to sound calm but that didn’t really work. Clarke sent him a look of utter betrayal that nearly knocked the breath out of him.

She took a step away from Raven and deflated a little.

“You don’t know who these people are,” she said, her voice coloured by fear. “I found them in the archives in Becca’s lab. This was the ultimate punishment, right before Alie deployed the missiles, reserved for the worst of the worst. They were supposed to be sent off-planet and never come back.” She was looking at Bellamy now, her eyes pleading. “We’re talking murderers, violent gang members and drug dealers. Rapists.

“No,” Clarke shook her head, “we’re gonna have to come up with a better plan.”

“I get what you’re saying, Clarke,” Raven said calmly, “but I already came up with the best one – we ask the most qualified people around for help! And besides, we don’t actually know who came down in that ship. They could've been the guards, or the cooks, any kind of civilian employees. They may have been on their way to pick up a new transport, not even knowing that the world had ended in the meantime.”

“Raven, I said no!” Clarke’s voice trembled as she exclaimed her disagreement and Bellamy could see Raven’s determination waver. She took a slow step closer towards Clarke and put her hand on Clarke’s arm.

“Clarke, I get it, I really do. You don’t want to have anything to do with them. But you must realise that sooner or later, they will figure out that they’re not alone here. One way or another, we will have to deal with them and we might as well be the ones coming up with a proposition.” Raven’s voice was softer now, more reassuring and Clarke took in a deep breath.

“I mean, we might actually come up with something worth their while.” Raven said with a tiny smile. "Like the fact that you survived here this whole time and know this place better than literally anyone! Do you remember how hopeless everyone was when the dropship first came down? You're the grounders now, you know. You can do better than they did."

Clarke closed her eyes and sighed deeply, while Raven squeezed her arm gently.

"I think Raven's right," Harper said quietly and Bellamy caught himself on the fact that her voice startled him—he was so focused on Clarke and Raven that he’d all but forgotten that there were others with them. "Maybe they aren't all that bad, and maybe they won't attack if we come to them to talk."

"Yeah," Monty nodded his head, agreeing with Harper. "We could use their help with more than just digging that bunker out, anyway. I mean, it’s not like we've got anywhere to live."

Murphy and Emori stayed quiet and Bellamy knew that they could take it or leave it basically. It took them some time but they'd grown into a family, up on the Ark, but while the rest of them still had someone buried underneath the Polis rubble, those two had nothing they could possibly want from either the bunker or the prisoner ship.

After a moment of Clarke looking between every one of them, she finally let out a breath of resignation.

"Fine," she said. "You can talk to them if you want to, I'm not gonna try and stop you anymore."

Raven nodded at her with a smile but Clarke didn't return it. Instead, she grabbed her jacket that was laying on a log next to her and shrugged it on.

"Talk to them if you really want to but I'm not gonna be a part of it, I can't" she said, taking a few steps away from the empty fire pit around which they were gathered. "I'm gonna go find Madi."

She walked away slowly, her shoulders hunched slightly and soon, she disappeared between the trees.

"We really don’t have another option," Raven said quietly and sat down on a tree trunk, stretching her leg in front of her, massaging the muscle above her brace.

"I know, Raven," Bellamy sighed with resignation.

"You should go after her," Murphy told him, the first thing he said in a while.

"I don’t think she's gonna change her mind."

"No, probably not," Murphy agreed. "But you should still go and talk to her. About anything," he said with a raised eyebrow and Bellamy wondered what had Murphy noticed in her that everyone else missed.

 

***

He followed her into the woods, hoping she won’t be too difficult to find but what he didn't expect was her just standing there, not even a hundred yards away from their small encampment.

She startled and quickly turned around to face him, her jaw clenched.

"Guess I'm not as horribly loud as you think I am after all," he teased, hoping to lighten the mood just a little and then there it was, a tiny smile crossed her face for a fraction of a second.

He reached her and they stood side by side for a while until Clarke looked at him and said,

"I can't do it, Bellamy."

"I know," he responded. "But I have to. My sister is down there."

"So is my mom," Clarke's voice broke and she swallowed. "But it's not just about me, or my mom. I have Madi to think about and her safety is more important than anything."

Bellamy nodded because that—that was something he understood more than anyone.

"She was eight when I found her," Clarke told him, a small smile tugging at her lips. "Or something around that, she wasn't sure. She was hungry and cold, and so scared. And I promised her that I will never let anything happen to her. So I can't just go in there and invite all those dangerous people into our lives, I can’t let them threaten our home," she explained with emotion in her voice.

"Yeah, I get it," he agreed. "I probably would've done the same if it were Octavia. Fuck, I definitely already did that at some point, didn't I? I'm not gonna try and change your mind."

Clarke sent him a grateful smile and it only just occurred to him that he had no idea what _home_ actually meant to her these days. He remembered her mentioning that they'd left Becca's lab sometime around a year ago but all he could think of was the rover, with all those blankets and pillows in the back of it but it wasn’t possible for the two of them to actually had lived there for any extended period of time. But neither one of them ever mentioned a home.

Bellamy wondered if she was actively trying to hide that information from them or simply didn't think to mention it and he was wondering if he had the right to ask her that anymore when Clarke took one look at him and started talking all on her own.

"We found this town, a few weeks after we left the lab. It's about a hundred miles away from here. There are still some buildings and roads that somehow survived but most importantly, it's so—alive. There's a spring and even some animals left in the forest. It's so beautiful and safe. It' like—"

"Eden," Bellamy interjected and Clarke looked at him surprised, like she couldn't believe he'd guessed it.

"Yes," she agreed with a smile. "It is exactly Eden."

Echo and Madi must've already been on their way back because it wasn't long before they reached Clarke and Bellamy, carrying a couple of rabbits each.

"We're gonna have a stew," Echo promised in a tone of voice that accepted no opposition. Bellamy smiled at her faintly—she'd always been the most vocal about her distaste for their limited diet on the Ark, it was a small wonder she jumped on an opportunity to eat anything else as soon as possible.

Bellamy noticed Madi roll her eyes with a smirk on her face, like somehow those two had already managed to develop some inside jokes. It felt impossible, that this girl they'd only met a day before would already feel this comfortable around them and it made him wonder, just how much had Clarke told her and what exactly did she say about them. About him.

"Hope you've got something good in that vehicle of yours, _Natblida_ ," Echo said to Madi, walking away with the girl towards the encampment, Bellamy and Clarke already forgotten, "'cause those look too good to be wasted on something tasteless."

Bellamy heard Madi laugh as they moved away from them and he turned to Clarke with a joke at the tip of his tongue but her expression shut his mouth immediately. She looked at Madi's retreating form with fierce determination and Bellamy felt a cold pang of fear.

"We, uhm, we can't stay here," she finally said, letting out a short huff of air. "If you’re going to Eligius, I have to take Madi away from here." She turned her head to look him in the eye, the decision clearly made already but still pleading.

Every fibre of Bellamy's being was screaming at him to grab her and never let her leave his side again but he just shook his head slightly, more to himself than anybody else. He'd tried that once before and it backfired so spectacularly that he had wondered if he'd ever be able to regain her trust. It wasn't his place to demand something like that of hers back then and it certainly wasn't now, when he still wasn't sure where they stood after all those years of separation.

Still, the thought of losing Clarke again, so quickly after he had impossibly, miraculously gotten her back was too much for him to bear.

He bowed his head in resignation and sighed, taking a few steps away from her.

"You do what you have to, Clarke," he told her, voice even. "I understand."

And no matter how much it hurt him, he really did.

 

***

Clarke spent the next few hours clearing out their things from the camp and packing up the rover, so that it'd be ready for when should leave the next morning. It was hypnotising to watch her work because apparently, they figured out how to create a semi-permanent shelter making only a minimal impact on the area—they tucked away their gear so discreetly that he didn't even know it was there until Clarke reached to retrieve it.

He was so focused on trying not to look like he was staring at her, that when Madi plopped down on the tree trunk next to him, he actually startled. It was getting almost annoying, that he'd jump like that now. The years on the Ark nearly killed his vigilance, it would seem.

"Did you two have a fight?" Maid asked without a preamble. Bellamy could really appreciate her no-bullshit attitude if she weren't looking at him like that. If she didn't have the same expression his sister used to have at her age, whenever she asked him something she'd already knew the answer to.

"No," he denied. "We just—disagreed," Bellamy added weakly which only earned him an unimpressed snort.

" _What else in new_." He heard Madi mutter under her breath and he swore to himself that he would ask Clarke just how much did Madi know about their life on the ground before Praimfaya.

Only he wouldn't, a voice in his head reminded him. Because Clarke was leaving and he didn't even know where she was going.

"We have had a discussion about an important issue concerning our next move and we had different ideas about how to deal with that issue," he tried again, hoping to sound more convincing but Madi clearly wasn't buying that.

"Wow, that really must be some skill," she said with a cocked eyebrow, "to tell all those words without actually _saying_ anything, huh?

"Okay, so," Madi cleared her throat and started counting off on her fingers, "you lot are going to talk to Eligius, even though you have no idea who they are cause no one but yourself even saw them and you don't know anything about them. And we are going back home, even though we've been watching them since they landed."

"Yes," Bellamy confirmed dumbly, even if it didn't seem like he was particularly needed in this conversation, cause Madi had it all figured out already.

Only then her face softened and she looked more like a thirteen-year-old girl than she'd even had before.

"Do you want us to go?" She asked and for the first time, she sounded unsure and maybe even worried.

"Of course not," he assured her, turning to face her. "But Clarke is right, dealing with the mining crew is going to be dangerous and she's responsible for your safety."

Madi looked at him for a moment, her face focused, like she was trying to work something out.

"But you didn't tell her you wanted her to stay, did you?" she asked but her expression clearly meant she'd already knew the answer to that as well.

 

***

Dinner was a stiff affair.

Echo's stew was a hit but without the elation of the recent reunion, everyone now acutely aware of the upcoming separation, the atmosphere felt heavy and stifling. The conversation wasn’t flowing like it did the other night and even an occasional joke felt forced was barely rewarded with a hint of a smile or chuckle.

They bid their goodnight early that evening, and as Bellamy took the first guarding shift, he could feel all of it slipping through his fingers and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

 

***

When he woke up the next morning, the sun was already up and he could hear the sounds of people around him getting ready to start the day. Bellamy dreaded getting up but after a few minutes of just lying there with his eyes closed, he finally untangled himself from his jacket and sat up.

He looked around the camp and felt himself panic a little when he couldn't see Clarke or Madi anywhere around, thinking that maybe they had left already, without even saying good bye but when he saw the rover still parked right where it stood the night before, he relaxed a bit.

He caught Harper's attention and she pointed her head at the woods.

"They went in there some time ago. I think they're discussing something," she explained and Bellamy nodded, some more of the tension leaving his body.

They were all packed by the time Clarke and Madi emerged from the woods. Madi went straight for the middle of the clearing, where they were all standing and turned around to face Clarke, her head held high, her expression defiant. Clarke stayed at the treeline and looked at Madi with steel in her eyes but after a few tense seconds of staring at each other, she deflated, her shoulders hunching.

"Fine," she huffed. "Looks like we're coming with you after all," Clarke said to no one in particular, her voice rigid. She came closer to them but instead of stopping, she just grabbed Murphy's flask that laid on top of his pack and headed straight for the rover.

No one moved until they heard the rover door being slammed shut, which shook them out of their astonishment. They all looked at each other in stunned silence before turning to Madi, who seemed—triumphant wasn't the right word, even though she'd clearly won whatever argument those two had had. There was the satisfaction that every teenager felt whenever they managed to bend an adult to their will but it was clear that it bothered her that she'd pushed Clarke into reacting the way she had.

"Well, I'm glad you're not leaving, kid." Raven said weakly, breaking the silence. "I still have a ton of shit to teach you."

 

***

Bellamy hesitated before following Clarke to the Rover but in the end, he figured if she wanted to be left alone, she could just ignore him or tell him to shove off and he would.

He knocked at the back window and waited till he heard a low grunt coming from inside that he'd taken as an invitation to go on. When he opened the door, Clarke was sitting with her back to the side of the rover, taking a healthy swig of the moonshine.

"It's six pm somewhere in the world, right?" Clarke said as he clambered inside and shut the door behind him but waved herself off seeing his confusion. "Eh, never mind."

She stared at the flask in her hand for a moment before finally looking up and at him.

"She said that I could go back home if I wanted to but she decided to stay behind with you," Clarke said, bitter. "Now, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?! It's not like I can drag her home by her hair and lock her in her room. I mean, I could." She sloshed the drink around in the flask and took one more gulp. "But she's just too stubborn for her own good, she'd just figure out a way to get back to you."

"Well, what did you expect, Clarke, _you're_ the one who raised her," Bellamy teased and Clarke's eyes snapped up to bore into him. But then, she kicked his foot lightly and he could see that she was relaxing a little. He just hoped it was him and not the booze.

"She's a teenager, Clarke," Bellamy continued, remembering when him mother would tell him the exact same thing. "Her only job is to question your authority. But Madi is smart, she wouldn’t be this stubborn if she didn't have a reason to, would she?" He gambled, gauging her reaction and if her resigned sigh was any indication, he nailed it.

It's just that there was something in the questions that Madi had asked him the day before, something in the way that she looked at everyone around when they talked that led him to believe that there was more to the argument she had with Clarke than just the dangers of dealing with the Eligius crew. But if neither one of them was willing to speak about it, he wasn't going to pry either.

"You just have to trust her to make her own choices," he said instead and Clarke snorted loudly.

"Yes, thank you for that." She laughed at him and it was probably the most beautiful sound Bellamy had heard in a long time. 'Cause I remember you were so fantastic about following your own advice."

"Hey, at least that gives you the unique chance of learning on my mistakes," he countered and leaned forward to snatch the flask out of Clarke's hand. She complained weakly but he just grinned at her. There wasn't much left, maybe a couple of fingers at the bottom, which meant it was mostly the unfiltered shit but that hardly mattered at this moment—cause if he were to think about his baby sister any longer, he needed the drink.

They lapsed into silence after that and for a brief moment, it felt companionable. Comfortable, even.

Bellamy looked ad Clarke, whose head now rested against the side of the rover, her eyes closed and breathing calm. He downed the last of the moonshine, which indeed tasted awful, and broke the silence.

"It had been pointed out to me that I never told you that I wanted you to stay," he said on a single breath, as if he were worried that if he paused even for a moment, his conviction might leave him. “And I do.”

Clarke opened her eyes and in the relative darkness inside the rover, he couldn't tell for sure, but Bellamy thought that he saw a blush creeping up her cheeks.

Now that, he definitely hoped was just because of him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! i hope you like it. kudos and comments would make my month.
> 
> there will be a second chapter, i'm about to star writing it in a minute but i figured this was a good moment to split this story in half.
> 
> come find me on tumblr @[carrieeve](http://carrieeve.tumblr.com).


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